I guess the fact is that we all in or minds think the photos do look so staged it would be hard to imagine the police could not see that?
I am not sure how common suicide by rifle is but you would think that the rifle /arm would fall away from the body and the hand would not remain in that position. I know the rifle has very little recoil but it is not how you would imagine the scene to look.
that is why I think the statements of officers who said they saw the body/bible/rifle in a different position should not be so easily dismissed.
Now it could be things were moved to check rifle safety/ check the body ( as officers said they saw blood running from her mouth) in a haphazard rather than a calculated way and then moved again ( to take photos) but if this is true and not admitted it does not prove Jeremys innocence but it would prove that the Jury were not getting the true images from the crime scene which would surely be relevant.
In countries where firearms are widely available they are used in about 60% of suicides. In countries where they are not widely available the percentage is much lower. In the UK percentage is around 2% only. The majority of these are with shotguns not rifles. Asphyxiation or suffocation (which are usually grouped together statistically but asphyxiation is more common).
When handguns are not outlawed they make up the majority of firearm suicides with shotguns taking second place and rifles last. When handguns are outlawed they make up a smaller amount of suicides and usually are outnumbered by shotguns and sometimes even rifle suicides.
So police in the UK were not and still are not used to dealing with many firearm related suicides.
The staging was to suggest Sheila was lying down on her back, held the gun along her body, fired and then the gun fell on her. If that actually happened the gun could indeed land on her the way it was found. The problems are that the bloodstains indicate she was seated not lying down and she had neither ant GSR on her gown as would be the case with the gun being fired along her body nor on her hands.
The police at the scene were not experts in blood stains and had no way to know whether she had GSR or not on her so it is understandable that they would need experts to detail such for them. Once such details were provided to those handling the investigation it changed things a great deal. But so did the moderator evidence and Julie's account.
We are not looking in the dark like police were. We are looking with the benefit of already having knowledge of everything. There is no way for us to shut hidsight off and put ourselves in the position of police at the outset.